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Dennis Henderson is about to finish his tour of the Great Loop, the 6,000-mile circle of the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, and the East Coast.

Many people make this trip, and a number stop in Oriental.

But Dennis, who lives in Detroit, is the first TownDock.net spoke to who is making the Great Circle in a Boston Whaler.

We caught up with him on the morning of May 30th, when his 17-foot boat was tied up to the Town Dock and Dennis was just finishing brushing his teeth and measuring out his morning vitamin pills.

He says doing the Great Loop in the Whaler was an idea that came to him in two parts.

Dennis says he spends a lot of time on his Whaler, mainly fishing. About ten years ago, he told friends that he wanted to take the Whaler from Ohio to Chicago by way of Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. He was met with skepticism.

“People said I couldn’t go to Chicago on this boat,” he says, “And I said, ‘I’ve been 30 miles in it, why not go 700?’”

And he did. But even then, he didn’t have the whole 6,000-mile loop in his sights. That decision would come two years later when Dennis trailered the boat to Montreal and then traveled from Montreal to Port Clinton, Ohio, where he’d begun his earlier trip to Chicago. To get there he traveled along the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

Lake Ontario “was terrible,” he says, “150 miles of open water.” There was just a bimini for protection. Yet as bad as it was, Dennis says that it was in the middle of Lake Ontario, that he “decided I could do the Great Circle.”

To do this trip, Dennis says, “You don’t need a big boat.”

Still, there were skeptics. Dennis says he usually quieted their doubts by pointing out that unlike many of their boats, he could hit speeds of 40 miles an hour and cover a lot of distance, more quickly. And arguably there wouldn’t be any more patches like the 150 miles of open Lake Ontario water.

So now Dennis had before him the task of covering the distance from Chicago to Montreal. Over the next few years, he would devote a week or two a year to knock off a few hundred miles of The Loop. (Even when he retired from the auto industry a few years ago, he kept to that pace.)

The third leg of the trip took him from Chicago toward the Mississippi and then on to New Orleans. Another year he boated from New Orleans to Upper Florida. Last year he ended up at Fernandina Beach, Florida, just south of the Georgia line.

Fernandina Beach is where Dennis and the Whaler resumed their trek the last week in May. The goal this time is Montreal.. and closing the Great Loop. This last leg is about 1800 miles and Dennis is giving himself three weeks to do it.

Dennis says his original plan was to go around Nova Scotia and take the St. Lawrence in from the Atlantic. But because the weather is still cool, icebergs were an issue, at least for the insurance companies. So the little Boston Whaler will not go near the town for which it is named, but rather will head up the Hudson from NYC and on toward Montreal.

He has packed enough food for his three-week trip, along with a tent. Dennis says he likes to pitch his tent in state parks or shoreline along the way. But on occasion he has rigged a bed on the open boat out of boat cushions and a duffel bag. Everything he has on board is wrapped in large plastic bags.

Last Leg Off To Fast Start
On the start of this final leg, Dennis was making good time. He reached Oriental on May 29th, covering the 500 miles from Fernandina Beach in less than three days. He did take a moment to stop in Beaufort, NC where he visited the Hammock House where Blackbeard is reputed to have hanged his wife.

In Oriental, Dennis’ Great Loop trip coincided with another circle being closed. Just the day before, and a few dozen yards away, Bernie Harberts had completed a circumnavigation begun in November 1998. The two spoke at the Town Dock Friday morning, just before Dennis headed north for Elizabeth City.

Dennis says his daughter was to joining him for travel through the Dismal Swamp and on up to NYC where they planned to spend a few days, before moving north toward Montreal.

In all, Dennis figures the Great Loop will have put about 7,000 miles under the shallow keel of his Boston Whaler.

All of which has helped in his current career, as a delivery captain. Dennis says the number of miles he’s logged helped him get his captain’s license, which is what he’s segued to since retiring from the auto industry.

Posted Friday June 13, 2003 by Melinda Penkava

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